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9 fictional psychologists and psychological therapists: 5. The Other Side of You by Salley Vickers

29/1/2014

The Other Side of You is about an encounter between two people; an encounter that, in different ways, saves both their lives. A serious suicide attempt has brought Elizabeth Cruikshank to the hospital where David McBride works as a psychoanalytically orientated psychiatrist. Shrouded in her despair, David is unable to make any progress with his patient until, recalling a painting by Caravaggio, he acknowledges their mutual stumbling humanity. In the course of a mammoth therapy session, Elizabeth shares her story of the love lost and found and lost again that led to her attempt to take her own life.

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7 Reasons Why Lovers of Fiction Should Read The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz

4/1/2014

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Published at the beginning of 2013, The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz is a gem of a book about psychoanalysis. Heavy with insight into the human condition while light on the jargon, it’s a most-read for any thoughtful individual, but I’m here to argue its particular value for readers and writers of fiction. If you like stories, I think you’ll be interested in these, and if you’re engaged in producing your own fiction, there’s as much to learn from these tales from the therapist’s couch as from any creative writing textbook. Here are 7 reasons why:

1. It’s unashamedly upbeat about the power of stories.

Many psychoanalytic case studies read like stories, but these are especially exquisite. Beautiful prose, tightly structured, these are moral stories without being moralistic, gentle fables in the manner of Aesop and Kipling that leave us pondering the big questions of how to live. Alongside the stories from the consulting room, there’s an examination of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, and ordinary incidents from the author’s life. Without being heavy handed, he leaves us in no doubt as to the centrality of storytelling, that without our stories we are diminished:

[O]ur childhoods leave us in stories … we never found a way to voice, because no-one helped us find the words. When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us – we dream of these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don’t understand. (p10)

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The obstacle within: lessons on character from a novelist and a psychotherapist

24/11/2013

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There’s lots of advice for writers on overcoming the internal barriers to making space for our writing, but I haven't found much on creating characters who similarly sabotage their own pursuit of their goals. Generally, we’re encouraged to create protagonists with clearly defined aims who go all-out to achieve them, although novelists who subvert this can still deliver a page-turning tale.

Tied in with my latest debut novelist Q&A I’ve been considering the character of Iosif in Anthea Nicholson’s The Banner of the Passing Clouds. His internal obstacle to happiness feels so real to him, it has a physical presence and a fear-inspiring name. Iosif is defined by his inner Stalin, compelled to appease him even as he wrestles against him. He cannot find fulfilment while this moustachioed squatter taps on his ribs, churns his bowels and steals his voice.

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Loving, hating and writer's block

12/7/2013

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How concerned should you be when you fall out of love with your work in progress? Is writer's block a genuine affliction or an affectation dreamed up to convince the world we're sensitive souls? Are there any lessons for writers of fiction in the research of a long-deceased English psychoanalyst and paediatrician?
My post is up this weekend on This Itch of Writing. Love it or loathe it, I'm sure you'll agree it's an honour and privilege to have my work on so illustrious a site.

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Foolish me

1/4/2013

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I've no plans to play any April Fool tricks on you today, but it is an opportunity to reflect on the naive and foolish notions I've harboured about my writing. Like believing that fixing the problems identified in my novel would necessarily make it better, or that winning a short story competition with significant prize-money might launch my career. Or that doing what I loved would bring fulfilment. (If that sounds bitter, I don't feel it. I think it's being realistic about the disappointments, what – in Kleinian terms – you might call reaching the depressive position, which in the bizarre terminology of psychoanalysis, is actually a really positive place to be!)

Regarding my last post, the snowman lost his head yesterday, the revisions are going well and I haven't forgotten the blog posts I mentioned.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with Kate and Anna McGarrigle on foolishness in love, and perhaps you'll share some of your thoughts about foolishness in writing.

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Fiction about writers and writing

25/2/2013

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I can't make up my mind about novels about writers and writing.

On the one hand, it seems a bit of a copout for a writer to make her (or more often his) main character another writer, a way of sidestepping the fact that a year of waiting tables, colourful or arduous as it might be, has little bearing on the working lives most of her readers, constantly updating their CV's. Who cares about the writing life anyway, except for other writers (although I confess that there seem to be enough of us about to make this a big enough market to target)? Despite, through this blog, I'm buying into the current requirement for self-promotion, and I'm sure Shelley Harris was being modest when she protested she was ordinary, generally I believe we writers are less interesting than what we write.

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